Application of the First Amendment to the States by the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution

The ratification of the conventions of nine states shall be sufficient for the establishment of this Constitution beween the states so ratifying the same.3 Generally, in their respective bills of rights, state constitutions restrained their governments.Although between the late eighteenth and the middle nineteenth centuries a few states restrained the free exercise of religion and discriminated against particular religious groups, on the other hand, many states constitutionally provided for religious freedom.Under the first organizations of state governments in view of early state constitutions, the elector was generally a freeholder subject to religious qualifications.But in the struggle for the extension of the franchise which began with the westward movements of populations and the spread of Jeffersonian democracy, religious qualifications for electors began to disappear from state constitutions.In the early nineteenth century, new state constitutions began to provide that no religious tests should -be required as a qualification for voting or for holding public office under the state; or the civil rights and privileges of state citizens be affected by their religious principles.Cf.